I noticed the popular poll on Max Extension vs Max Output. It was interesting reading about everyone's experiences and preferences regarding how they liked their sound. With the latest generation of Hsu subwoofers, the VTF-15H's Q control is now a common feature across most of the VTF line. I was wondering what Q settings people use or enjoy the most.

Yes, I would like to know also. I have been playing with it for months now. Switching from .5 to .7.. Almost never .3 because I like/want DEEP bass... 0.7 gives me the deepest. , but I lose a bit of Punch. I wonder what is the consensus for movies as that is when I mainly use mine for. I understand .3 is mainly for Music. I can't vote yet as I have been all over the place. Maybe I just need to measure the response in the room first. Hmmmmmmm....

Yes, I would like to know also. I have been playing with it for months now. Switching from .5 to .7.. Almost never .3 because I like/want DEEP bass... 0.7 gives me the deepest. , but I lose a bit of Punch. I wonder what is the consensus for movies as that is when I mainly use mine for. I understand .3 is mainly for Music. I can't vote yet as I have been all over the place. Maybe I just need to measure the response in the room first. Hmmmmmmm....

I'm with you on this one.I bought this sub mostly for HT use . I've been back and forth between all 5 settings and I can't really pick one I love and stick with it. I really enjoy the 0.5 With 1port and EQ2 because of the mid bass but I really can't tell a difference with EQ1.

Yes, I would like to know also. I have been playing with it for months now. Switching from .5 to .7.. Almost never .3 because I like/want DEEP bass... 0.7 gives me the deepest. , but I lose a bit of Punch. I wonder what is the consensus for movies as that is when I mainly use mine for. I understand .3 is mainly for Music. I can't vote yet as I have been all over the place. Maybe I just need to measure the response in the room first. Hmmmmmmm....

I've measured the different Qs in my room and the lowest few Hz will rise a couple dbs at .7 which isn't a bad thing.

There also seems to be a sound preferrance between them. It seems to me that .3 is more controlled than .7 to my aging ears.

The primary goal of my subwoofer purchase last fall was to provide as even of frequency response as I could, as low as I could, in my main shared space where our "home theater" resides. This is a fairly large space in and of itself because it includes the kitchen and a large fireplace nook, and it opens onto another shared space that contains a dining room and main living room of the house. There's no way to seal it all off.

At the same time, I'm not the sort of person that listens to things regularly up over 100db. There's loud, and then there's dangerous. I've done my time in various lay PA and theater environments (usually with earplugs). I don't want that at home.

In a nutshell this all means that I want things to go deep, and at a reasonable sound level.

My mains afford me the luxury of going down to 50hz without issue. In fact, on most material other than serious movie offerings or some of my electronic music, the sub can be turned off (though I rarely do).

So with this in mind, I run my VTF-3 MK4 at EQ1 (to benefit low frequency extension), one port open (lowest tuning frequency, for more low frequency extension). Initially I ran with a Q of .3, and by all means loved it, but I ran into some serious room gain between 50ish hz down to 30hz hz. I didn't mind so much. It wasn't flat, but meh, neither are my ears.

Months later, a bit more experimentation. I bumped the Q to .7 based on the nifty graphs on the VTF-15H page (might I suggest generating the same type of response curves for the VTF-3 MK4, Dr?). This caused an even more obnoxious gan in some of the lower frequencies, but what it really really did is bring out the suuuuuper low stuff (down below 25hz).

So I lowered the gain from it's usual 9:30 location back down to about 8:45 and recalibrated MCACC on my receiver. I also told the receiver that it could bump the crossover point up to 80hz if it wanted. I was curious as to how it would equalize everything out.

Once done, with the receiver no longer considering the mains full range, and part of the MCACC equalization going towards the subwoofer now... things changed. That huuuuuge hump I used to have was now mostly gone, and the presence of the super low frequencies stayed. I bumped the gain on the sub back up to ~9:00 and have left it ever since.

The more you ask equalization to do for you pre-amplification, the less the amp is going to have in reserves when things really get crazy. Port gain doesn't have this problem because it's purely acoustical manipulation of the waveform after it leaves the cone. Again though, EQ1 vs EQ2 and any of the boosting that running the Q above .3 gives you is a direct drain on amplifier capacity.

However... this really only matters to you if you run your sub aggressively.

I've done some tests with this setup with the gain ran as high as 12:00-1:00, and frankly it's scary. Not because the sub can't do it. Not at all. The sub is just jaw-dropping in what it can do up there. But doing this puts things up at 100db or better in some of the passbands, and frankly when I can feel the drywall flexing, when my chinese porcelain tea set is trying to walk itself off a shelf, when pictures are trying to hop off of wall anchors... it's too loud.

Rooms vary, and if you have a smaller space, the room's going to help you acoustically reinforce lower frequencies. All things being equal, you'll only require less aggressive Q settings to get solid frequency response down in the crazy of the lows. As the room size gets bigger... you may need more help, and that's where you'll want to transition to EQ1, one port... and start bumping Q.

The primary goal of my subwoofer purchase last fall was to provide as even of frequency response as I could, as low as I could, in my main shared space where our "home theater" resides. This is a fairly large space in and of itself because it includes the kitchen and a large fireplace nook, and it opens onto another shared space that contains a dining room and main living room of the house. There's no way to seal it all off.

At the same time, I'm not the sort of person that listens to things regularly up over 100db. There's loud, and then there's dangerous. I've done my time in various lay PA and theater environments (usually with earplugs). I don't want that at home.

In a nutshell this all means that I want things to go deep, and at a reasonable sound level.

My mains afford me the luxury of going down to 50hz without issue. In fact, on most material other than serious movie offerings or some of my electronic music, the sub can be turned off (though I rarely do).

So with this in mind, I run my VTF-3 MK4 at EQ1 (to benefit low frequency extension), one port open (lowest tuning frequency, for more low frequency extension). Initially I ran with a Q of .3, and by all means loved it, but I ran into some serious room gain between 50ish hz down to 30hz hz. I didn't mind so much. It wasn't flat, but meh, neither are my ears.

Months later, a bit more experimentation. I bumped the Q to .7 based on the nifty graphs on the VTF-15H page (might I suggest generating the same type of response curves for the VTF-3 MK4, Dr?). This caused an even more obnoxious gan in some of the lower frequencies, but what it really really did is bring out the suuuuuper low stuff (down below 25hz).

So I lowered the gain from it's usual 9:30 location back down to about 8:45 and recalibrated MCACC on my receiver. I also told the receiver that it could bump the crossover point up to 80hz if it wanted. I was curious as to how it would equalize everything out.

Once done, with the receiver no longer considering the mains full range, and part of the MCACC equalization going towards the subwoofer now... things changed. That huuuuuge hump I used to have was now mostly gone, and the presence of the super low frequencies stayed. I bumped the gain on the sub back up to ~9:00 and have left it ever since.

The more you ask equalization to do for you pre-amplification, the less the amp is going to have in reserves when things really get crazy. Port gain doesn't have this problem because it's purely acoustical manipulation of the waveform after it leaves the cone. Again though, EQ1 vs EQ2 and any of the boosting that running the Q above .3 gives you is a direct drain on amplifier capacity.

However... this really only matters to you if you run your sub aggressively.

I've done some tests with this setup with the gain ran as high as 12:00-1:00, and frankly it's scary. Not because the sub can't do it. Not at all. The sub is just jaw-dropping in what it can do up there. But doing this puts things up at 100db or better in some of the passbands, and frankly when I can feel the drywall flexing, when my chinese porcelain tea set is trying to walk itself off a shelf, when pictures are trying to hop off of wall anchors... it's too loud.

Rooms vary, and if you have a smaller space, the room's going to help you acoustically reinforce lower frequencies. All things being equal, you'll only require less aggressive Q settings to get solid frequency response down in the crazy of the lows. As the room size gets bigger... you may need more help, and that's where you'll want to transition to EQ1, one port... and start bumping Q.

I was playing with this yesterday and yes it can get tricky to pick a favorite. For example, I even tried 2 ports open at .7 (and .3) vs 1 port open at .7
2 ports open offers more mid-low base impact for some scenes where you can tell and moving to .3 just makes the bass tighter which for music I really liked if I want to go wild and loud.
On the other hand, movies with ULF stuff then suddenly were missing that awesome extra feel\sound that I have with one port and .7 (or even .5).
My room gives me good spl down to 12.5Hz so for me this makes a big difference but I also think some movies with less deep bass and more music, maybe something like Mamma Mia (havent tried it yet with the 15H but I love ABBA and the movie..sue me! lol) I am thinking will be better with 2 ports and .3 or even sealed.
Gosh now I got something to try today.

So overall that is the beauty...we can make it our own sound to fit our preference or material. The doc gave us the joys of having a choice.

That's it's lowest EQ manipulation point, but do you know the Q of it's boost/cut? I honestly don't, and haven't found any documentation on it, but I've measured in-room level differences as low as 50hz by manipulating the 63hz point.

At any rate I think what's probably happening with the manipulations I've done is that the Q of .7 brought up the very, very bottom end, the lowering of the volume brought all of it down a notch, and some bizzaro reinforcement with the mains is now gone with them set to Small.

I was noticing last night on some really specific music selections that the whole thing sounds a lot less... I dunno... stuffy? in kick drum transients and resonances. I really had to listen close.

I honestly haven't had the time to go through it all with the level meter again, and since here in about 3 weeks it's all getting torn down, moved and rebuilt because of new furniture... kinda pointless.

That's it's lowest EQ manipulation point, but do you know the Q of it's boost/cut? I honestly don't, and haven't found any documentation on it, but I've measured in-room level differences as low as 50hz by manipulating the 63hz point.

At any rate I think what's probably happening with the manipulations I've done is that the Q of .7 brought up the very, very bottom end, the lowering of the volume brought all of it down a notch, and some bizzaro reinforcement with the mains is now gone with them set to Small.

I was noticing last night on some really specific music selections that the whole thing sounds a lot less... I dunno... stuffy? in kick drum transients and resonances. I really had to listen close.

I honestly haven't had the time to go through it all with the level meter again, and since here in about 3 weeks it's all getting torn down, moved and rebuilt because of new furniture... kinda pointless.

You're going to drive yourself crazy :P I couldn't tell you anything about the boost/cuts, sorry

That's it's lowest EQ manipulation point, but do you know the Q of it's boost/cut? I honestly don't, and haven't found any documentation on it, but I've measured in-room level differences as low as 50hz by manipulating the 63hz point.

At any rate I think what's probably happening with the manipulations I've done is that the Q of .7 brought up the very, very bottom end, the lowering of the volume brought all of it down a notch, and some bizzaro reinforcement with the mains is now gone with them set to Small.

I was noticing last night on some really specific music selections that the whole thing sounds a lot less... I dunno... stuffy? in kick drum transients and resonances. I really had to listen close.

I honestly haven't had the time to go through it all with the level meter again, and since here in about 3 weeks it's all getting torn down, moved and rebuilt because of new furniture... kinda pointless.

you should be able to see the Q(bandwidth) F(frequency) and ATT(attenuation) if you go into:

Last night we were watching Immortals and at the loud parts, fighting scenes! One of my subs was popping, I have 4 of them in the room VTF-3 MK4
the back right one was the one that was popping, So I turned the Q control down to 0.3 from 0.7 it stops the popping but It seems to take away the really low bottom end. The other 3 subs can handle it. Thanks

Last night we were watching Immortals and at the loud parts, fighting scenes! One of my subs was popping, I have 4 of them in the room VTF-3 MK4
the back right one was the one that was popping, So I turned the Q control down to 0.3 from 0.7 it stops the popping but It seems to take away the really low bottom end. The other 3 subs can handle it. Thanks

Off the top of my head, are the subs gained matched or level matched?

Gain match they all play the same. level matched they all have their gains set differently and one or more subs can hit the bottom sooner than the rest.

I really liked how it dug REALLY deep with the Q set at or near .7.....the bias toward low frequencies didn't bother me at all for music, but kick drums (think rush, led zeppelin, etc.) lacked definition and tightness. Having it shaded just past the .5 setting preserves the "depth" and extension, but really tightens up the sub for music. After messing with room placement, I found that there was relatively little difference in definition between .3 and ~.5 for my room....there was a HUGE difference between .5 and .7. It's a very effective control and I'm glad Doc included it in the design. Suddenly, any sub that doesn't have it seems lacking.

Oh, and the darn thing sounds fantastic on music. Goes great with my Arx A5 towers, which are themselves critically damped designs (with a Qts of roughly .5). They ate my old eD A7s-450 for lunch and spat it back out; it just couldn't match the tightness and control of my A5 towers. The HSU keeps up so well, it's difficult for me to tell where one ends and the other begins..... color me impressed.

I ran Audyssey in various different set-ups with my VTF-3 Mk5. EQ1, large port open, Q 0.7 offered the best (deepest) sound for my taste.

I've been messing with my VTF3-MK5 sometime I love it sometimes not so much. After going through this thread I just changed mine to 4" port open and EQ1 Will see how deep it goes on the new Transformers this weekend.

I've been messing with my VTF3-MK5 sometime I love it sometimes not so much. After going through this thread I just changed mine to 4" port open and EQ1 Will see how deep it goes on the new Transformers this weekend.

How is the VTF3-MK5 in sealed mode? only mode left to try

Sealed mode is primarily for music. Far less deep bass headroom. Not recommended for HT applications. If you like deep bass, 4" port open is the way to go.

First I did something different. I turned the volume knob on the sub upto about 11:55. With the knob at 11oclock my Marantz SR5010 would calibrate the sub to either 0db or -.5db. this time the sub came in @ -2.5db. I bumped up the sub in the menu to 0db. I left the sub 4" port open and EQ1. I played some 80's rock (UFO No Place to run) and noticed a dramatic improvement. I then move the Q to about a hair over 5. Now it was nice and tight.

We watched the new transformers @-15db oh man YES it's there. Most of listening is between -22 to -15 for movies and most music. For some afternoon unwinds I'll take it up to -10db for some relaxing music.

I am using the system with DENON AVR-X4000 and VTF-3 MK 5 HP
I tried various settings but Audyssey MultEQ XT32 rolled off 30 Hz or less
I ran Audyssey with sealed mode and Q0.3 on VTF-3 MK5 HP
After that, when I changed to Q 0.7, I got a deep bass
To further flatten the frequency response, we raised the volume of the subwoofer
and applied the EQ correction with the AUTO EQ of the Room EQ Wizard using the MiniDSP 2 x 4
I opened one bass reflex port and made EQ correction setting even in that state
By making two EQ settings it was possible to switch easily between sealed mode and 4 "port open sound
Sealed mode bass sounds solid 4 "port open bass sounds clear

I changed my surround speakers so I had to run Audyssey again. I tried what MARI said put my VTF3-MK5 in sealed mode Q to .03. After Audyssey I checked the EQ on my Marantz SR5010 (Audyssey XT) and the bass EQ graph was mostly flat to almost 120hz.

I opened one port, changed the Q to .05 1/2.

Put on War of the Worlds, when the alien come out of the ground it's was like an earthquake.

Metallica Black CD nice clean tight bass, a little overpowering at times but still sweet.

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